Hagakure

must be the condition it is in quality looks different to the other one hard to make a decision based on photograph though

Caught this on landline the other night http://www.abc.net.au/landline/content/2006/s2208413.htm A property near gawler in SA that has a pretty awesome permaculture setup. There is a video of it on the website.

welcome to the forum i would recommend posting a bit so people get to know you online a bit first

get some pereskiopsis, chop off the pups and graft them.

mushrooms were stored in honey as a preservative. bacteria etc cant grow in honey so its a good way to stop your stash from decomposing away, especially if you live in humid part of the world.

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=2160815834239891699 transhumanism, singularity etc

i heard he is wearing sunnies cause he got a shiner from the party. dunno if thats true but would make sense.

hell no i didnt buy the article. this the internet, i shouldnt have to pay for anything :D i heard about this on a podcast a while ago. it has been featured in many articles so there is bound to be more info out there for free. yeah i agree there is a headstart there but still think its an interesting and good result. after all these robots havent evolved up from a single cell like we did, they are functioning bodies and the code is providing the interface with those bodies. it would be interesting to have code evolve up from something even more limited and let it find the light sensors etc and learn how to use em. not sure how easy it would be to select for from that point though. all the robots arent gonna eat for a very long time so their initial fitness is gonna be zero across the board. hard to select for any progress. its true you cant get true randomness but you can get outputs from certain types of code that are essentially as good as random. enough randomness for experiments that depend on a bit to generate a mixed population to select for, thats for sure. if ever it reaches a point where this isnt random enough, hoever, you can hook a computer up to a geiger counter or some other random input and use that. but yeah, pseudo-randomness would be enough for this kind of experiment. i disagree completely. we humans are still evolving yet we already have our however many genes etc. evolution is a bit of randomness and selection. its not getting something from nothing, its generally building upon already existing frameworks. with these robots some had their genes selected for because the behavior they developed was sneaky and tricked others into dying while letting their own genes continue on. others behaved honestly and worked together with a group and passed on their behaviour that way. these behaviours were still emergent even though a framework was provided. if the code was setup to bias these outcomes, however, then it would be a unexciting result. hmmm mnow i really want to find out more about that code as well. will have a search for some more info. the development of hard AI could be similar to this example. if we had computers generate code completely randomly, there is going to be a lot of bullshit and messing around before we can even get something that will display something on the screen. by setting up a basic intelligence, however, then allowing for a certain amount of randomness in every aspect of it, testing all of em, selecting for the ability to meet some requirement, and repeat, then you are going to get more and more complex thoughts and behaviours in ways we wouldnt think of coding. those robots started out following a completely nonsense type of behaviour and developed effective food finding and communicating techniques simply by selecting for survivors, "breeding" the survivors together, and adding a bit of randomness. thats evolution.

quick article relating to this discussion http://discovermagazine.com/2008/jan/robot...earn-how-to-lie

there is a reply in the other thread t st tantra

a lot of material to cover first off ill bring this in from the other thread well that all depends on your definition of sentience. i like the wiki definition of sentience "refers to the ability to feel or perceive subjectively, not necessarily including the faculty of self-awareness". sentience requires some subjectivity. im quite sympathetic to the hindu way of looking at the world as drama or a form of pantheism. if you define everything as god then sure enough, everything you come across is god. but that does not mean that everything has the capacity for subjective thought. you can, howerver, always broaden up the defination of sentience to include everything. from the wiki article "In Jainism, all the matter is endowed with sentience; there are six degrees of sentience, from one to six. Water, for example, is a sentient being of first order, as it is considered to possess only one sense, that of touch. Man is considered to be sentient being of the sixth order." while its not the definition i use, im cool with it. saying that water has some type of conciousness capable of subjective thought, however, i disagree with. so yeah, once again philosophical discussions get caught up in definitions. on the subject of pain, im with ballzac. IMO pain requires an observer for it to be pain. if i am not observing the damage done to my body due to my nerves being blocked i am still being damaged but am not feeling pain. mirco - its late at night and thats a long post. hope you dont mind if i answer it next time i log on. dude same with your post. i will make one quick comment though there is a lot of talk about plants communicating with chemicals. i think this comes down to the ego of humans. plants have these chemicals for many reasons including pest defence with peyote being the prime example of that. some chemicals pants make will make us trip, some will kill us, some will provide us with nutrition. they are making these chemicals cause they have been selected for for whatever reason. those defending against predators will naturally be selected fro the plants with the highest doses as the weaker ones get eaten. is the plant talkin specifically to us? IMO no. we just have receptors that have been setup to handle similarly shaped chemicals that get tickled when we ingest these chemicals. if the plants that make us trip are talking to us specifically then are the poisonous plants saying "fuck you" to all us humans? lets uproot em all the cheeky buggers. in reality, however, they are just developing in strange ways in response to selectionary pressure and are still a vital part of the ecosystem. like all lifeforms are. if plants are communicating to us specifically then why can we synthesise these compounds in a lab and produce the exact result. who is talking to us then? what about all these compounds sasha has created that arent found in nature. they still have distinct effects upon us and are teachers in different ways. from my perspective our brains are setup with all these receptors and mechanisms to function. our ability to perceive are world and process it through our conciousness is a very complicated task requiring many chemical messengers. some chemicals look similar to these chemicals and will effect the brain in specific ways. LSD will cause your senses to mix allowing you to see sound, feel colours etc as it acts on the part of the brain responsible for these feelings (forgotten what its called but i got a feeling its just above the back of your neck). people who have had this region removed due to injury or required surgery no longer get any of those responses from lsd. for me its a case of occams razor. if an aspect isnt required for an explanation of a mechanism or just ad extra complexity when its not required then chop it away. especially if there is no empirical evidence for it. wpw that last bit ended up being a lot more words than i expected i would write. hopefully it responds to some thoughts in micromegas and dude's posts though so i can write less later. also may i just add one thing. a member of the board asked, partly in jest, why i hate everyone. im not writing all this because of any animosity towards anyone. i try to keep all my posts focused purely on debating the facts and not sinking into insults and personal attacks. i grow plants, use em and am very fond of many of the concepts surrounding a shamanistic way of living. i am however, very science focused and approach all of these things from a very different perspective to many others. where others see spirits i see insights into my own conciousness, where some see magic rituals i see tools that help induce certain brainstates in a brain that is operating quite differently due to chemical influence. this forum would be boring if everyone thought exactly as i did just as would be boring if everyone thought as you did. im interested in other peoples ideas and hope that other people find some interesting point in my ideas. anyway, let the discussion continue.

down and out in london and paris is a great read i recently finished "Complexity: The Emerging Science at the Edge of Order and Chaos" by M. Mitchell Waldrop which is a great read. at times it focuses less on the pure science and more on the individuals and organisations responsible for developing the field of science but i didnt mind that, broke things up. basically talks about emrgence, possible theories for abiogenesis, modelling complex systems like economies, setting up evolving computer programs to adapt to complex situations, potential for artificial life and intelligence. lots of stuff. thoroughly enjoyable. im currently reading "the science of good and evil" by michael shermer. it basically talks about why we are moral from evolutionary and cultural perspectives. just read a passage talking about the importance of gossip. in a small tribal community gossip is important for maintaining morality. any wrong actions are passed along and your standing is lowered and people will be less likely to help you. good actions the opposite. in a large society, however, its no longer the case that everyone knows everyone. hence the rudeness you find in big cities (some mates came back from new york and london and said that everyone is incredibly rude in those cities). so yeah when wandering tribes developed into larger groups like cheifdoms and states organised religion becomes a necessity. if people gossiping about you no longer works then the fear that some almighty is watching you is the next best thing in ensuring a moral society. its pretty intersting and i hope to pick up enough cool info from it to make it worth my while but i guess its not a "must read" book. worth checking out if the topic interests yuo but if you dont read much and are looking for a book then there are better options out there.

is alcohol sentient? is psilocybin sentient? is THC sentient? is serotonin sentient? micro - i have just started responding to your post in the other thread

this is in response to micromegas' post in the other thread. this is a kind of communication. through coevolution an animal associates a smell with a plant that provides it with food. plants that provide more of that smell will then have more of their seeds scattered by the animals that find it more readily. more of this food around now means more animals associated that smell with food. and so the co-evolution occurs. sure, its a type of communication. i disagree with this and am very wary of the secret life of plants as i have read some scathing reviews on the quality of the science and the interpretations of the authors. put it this way, that was uncertain science from the 70s. if plants really could perceive emotional states in the way some people suggest it would be front cover of "nature" material. so where is the current research? where are the peer reviewed journal articles from reputable sources? as there is a black hole in this regard i think its likely that the abilities of plants to perceive our emotions is unlikely at best. besides think about it logically, how do we perceive emotions? through sight generally, or we can hear it in a persons voice. perhaps we could smell a fart and conclude that they are nervous and other more creative use of the sense but those are the two main mechanisms. plants cant see and they cant hear. they could pick up vibrations in their cells but what mechanism could possibly translate any of those vibrations into some type of response. could go into this ore but wanna answer all of these points first. perhaps in a future post. yes the world revolves around humans. all these plants are put here for our use and are communicating to us. or perhaps humans are just a bunch of animals that have evolved more advanced intelligence but are equal to all the other organisms from the perspective of the universe. see when a plant is low on water the cells shrink up and lose their turgidity. this means the leaves and stems will wilt because the structural strengh of the cells is comprimised. what you are saying is plants will wilt to tell you they are pissed off, the world revolves around humans. what im saying is plants will have certain physiological responses to certain problems, like a lack of water or nutrient deficiency and because we can tell it is sick it looks sad from an anthropomorphic viewpoint. okay plants communicate with each other through various chemical messengers etc. but could it be that plants grow well in a community of plants due to symbiotic relationships due to co evolution? what requires these plants to be communicating for them to be growing well? why cant it be due to things we can observe like some plants fixing nitorgen, others attracting pollinators? why is some extra dimension of communication required when all these other processes explain quite easily why these plants are growing together well? aight im getting sick of typing i will come back to the others later or focus on any rebuttals but i think you get my jist. the human brain tends to anthropomorphise things as a form of pattern recognition which helps us to process complicated data more easily. while being a usefull tool to help navigate yourself through reality i dont think that is what reality really is. we just dont have brains that have evolved enough to process all the data to understand it in its true form enough (though we can break it down into tiny little elements and understand those).

i agree with ballzac on pain who gives pain killers to their plants before pruning them? its not a matter of whether plants can recognise that damage has been done to them. conciousness is required for true pain to exist. if i block pain receptors from signalling to my brain with an anaesthic i no longer feel pain. my cells will respond to any damage like normal but the pain wont exist as it requires the conciousness observing it. how can pain exist without an observer? and to get back to sentience i prefer the definition from wikipedia that "Sentience refers to the ability to feel or perceive subjectively, not necessarily including the faculty of self-awareness." the subjectivity requires conciousness. plants are most likely not conscious. how can we make that assumption? their cells are far to simplistic. leaves are made up of light fixing cells, protective coatings and areas to allow gaseous exchange, stems are mostly pholem and xylem allowing the transfer of nutrients and water respectively, roots also have vascular tissue and cells that allow water and nutrients to be soaked up and facillitate symbiotic relationships with bacteria or fungi. the neurons animals possess allow massive communication between millions of different cells combining to form a loop of consciousness that can interact with its environment. we dont see any cells that can communicate in an even remotely similar way in plants. plants are, however, alive and will respond to certain influences. if more nutrients are found in one section of the soil (say near a busted sewer pipe) the roots will grow more in that direction. this is not a concious intelligence, however. it is emergent behaviour that acts in an intelligent manner due to many different cells following certain rules set in place through DNA and therefore seleted for over many generations. read a book called "emergence" or "complexity". its a hot field of topic at the moment and there are plenty of books coming out all the time on it at the moment.

okay lets break this into little chunks "their communication comes in many forms on many levels" like what?

wiki "Sentience refers to utilization of sensory organs or organelles, the ability to feel or perceive subjectively, not necessarily including the faculty of self-awareness." subjectiveness implies some kind of consciousness of the mind. could those that think plants are sentient could please describe how they are conscious?

well to be fair the matrix and terminator 2 do present certain situations where machines could wipe out humans etc. while they are entertaining stories they are thought experiments as well. heres hoping fiction writers will have covered all the dangerous possibilities by the time we need to start implementing controls. simplistic rules like asimov's for example can backfire. at the end of the day i fear greedy humans combined with AI more than i fear AI by itself, thats for certain.

im not sure how much you can bring in stuff like the matrix, terminator or asimov. if the rules and conditions did work in those stories we wouldnt have much of a plot. as for seeing humans as "merely meat machines" thats some pretty loaded terms you are using. i dont think anyone would want to refer to themselves as that. we, like all lifeforms, are patterns. we have inputs, we process this information and then have certain outputs. the reason humans are more interesting to watch than an amoeba (well most of them) is that we receive more information, process it in more complex ways and then output a huge range of actions. none of us doubt that computers can receive shitloads of information, the outputs are also infinite. the processing is just too simple for us to find it sexy in any way. give a computer a task and it will do it. give a human a task to do and they are considering how much they like you, the social pressure if they do or dont do it, whether they can use it as a bargaining chip in the future, how hungry they are and if the task can wait till after lunch and so on and so on. the pattern of behaviour is indeed interwoven with our organic nature. i guess the question is would AIs have some kind of equivalent and/or could we introduce something in the mix to give us something comparable. i think there would be and that we could induce it. will write more later. feel like a break from the computer.

good post morg

plants that provide us with drugs arent necessarily more important to the environment than those that dont provide us with drugs. sure there is a relationship with the plant cause you are getting something from it but when it comes to judgments about harvesting etc the ecosystem is what needs to be considered. if a plant giving you dmt is prolific and non-native and ecologists say that if it is removed it will help more threatened plants regain numbers, then ringbark away. if the consequences of removal are negative but they can be harvested sustainably then go for that. if you had an environment that was being choked by a weed would you treat that weed with respect and let it survive on the basis that its making you trip? if you would then you are putting your needs ahead of the environment's which is the same thing humans do when they remove plants in an unsustainable manner. so, does anyone know the stance of rangers and the like on the removal of acacias from areas where they are not native? and one other thing, if you are removing a whole tree, big trees, even dead ones, can be very important to the local ecosystem in terms of providing homes for other animals, helping to keep the water table down and preventing soil erosion (well if they are dead they arent as important for the last two situations but you get the idea). in some cases removing smaller trees would do less damage to ecosystem than removing big ones. it is a similar thing with fish, people often throw the small ones back and keep the big ones but for some species removing the big ones does more damage to the population as they are the most important breeders. i dont know if this is the case with acacias.

i use a mix of cacti mix and sand. works fine. except for bloody aztekiums (though it could be due to old seeds?) has anyone found that they have had to modify conditions for specific types of cacti?

cool illegal brain ill check out stephen baxter seen the first ghost in the shell and read the manga (preferred the manga) and yeah deals with the topic nicely. the japs have dealt with stuff like this in their pop culture for years. komodo im pretty certain intelligence greater than humans will form on machines. why? because our intelligence developed through the process of evolution over a long period of time. our universe is made up of a powerful set of rules governing the behaviour of molecules. as the potential interactions of different molecules is huge and the number of planets is this universe is so massive its conceivable that the odds are that life could spontaneously form through one method or another. (if you hold up a grain of sand to the sky you are covering 10,000 galaxies. the odds of life forming are slim but the number of potential locations for it is massive) evolution is an incredibly powerful force and has produced animals that are aware of themselves and the universe that they are in. i cant think of anything preventing evolution from occurring on a computer, in fact it has been done over and over again with virtual agents. all it takes is a system that has the right level of rigidness and flexibility (too rigid, its dead, too flexible, its pure chaos) that can create random combinations of variables and select for them to develop intelligence that is as powerful as hardware will allow it to be. of course there are some labs that are breaking down brains into single neural events and programming simulations that behave like brains. this is also cool but at the end of the day if we are going to get above the brain capacity currently on this planet we are going to have to let it evolve. and are dinosaurs really outdated? is a crocodile "outdated"? sure there are animals that have evolved further in terms of brain function but thats one way of looking at it. if you dump us all in a jungle with a bunch of raptors i think you will find that our human physical abilities are rather poor in comparison. everything fitting the pattern of life is equal, but lifeforms with power tend to push others out of the way to better their own situation. its our instinct. and it has resulted in a pretty weak environment right now cause humans are so damn good at it. so what about AI? will it push everylife form off the planet? i hope not and also dont think it will. technology is getting smaller and smaller and energy is getting cleaner. was reading an article about some solar cells that are so sensitive they pick up energy at night. the future is hopefully going to involve some powerfull green technology and AI can develop in the virtual world. it doesnt need robots mating with other robots and using resources in the way we humans use them. also, seeing we are the ones creating this AI why would we allow it to impose conditions that fuck us over. pulling the plug should be an option always open. we will be outdated and useless for one key role and that is the colonisation of space. human lives are too short and the distances are too great. AIs, however, could potentially not only reach other planets but through nanotechnology develop new ecosystems and spread life across the universe. if we wanted to do that. is it egotistical to want life to go on? ah i love this topic, so many questions get thrown up writing the smallest sentences. if we have some ultimate intelligence could it get us as close to utopia as possible? and what would utopia be? surely its not us all lying around in luxury as humans need drama. perhaps we would still need wars and the possibilty of death. i guess the matrix dealt with that question a bit. but yeah someone else take the topic for a while and have some fun with it.

http://www.ted.com/talks/view/id/194 really enjoyed this talk. can learn a fair bit from it but it is also pretty entertaining.

http://www.sprword.com/videos/zeitgeist.html love this kind of stuff.